Tuesday, July 11, 2017

There is No Such Thing as ‘a Russian German;’ Only Germans from Russia, One of Them Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, July 11 – Russians and
some Germans refer to the Germans of Russia as “’Russian Germans,’” Sergey
German says; “but this name is the greatest possible lie and provocation,
invented by thodse who for many years have considered us a third-class illiterate
tribe capable only of herding cattle, cutting wood, mining coal and cutting
timber.”

German, the son of Germans deported
by Stalin who has been living in Germany since 2002, says that “by calling us
‘Russian Germans,’ the Russian authorities are manipulating our feelings” and
suggesting we are almost Russians. “This is a lie because we never were
Russians and never had the rights given them from birth” (vestnikcivitas.ru/pbls/4087).

“Therefore,
I can assert: ‘Russian Germans’ did not exist a priori. Just as never existed
‘Russian Jews,’ ‘Russian Poles,’ ‘Russian Ukrainians’ or ‘Russian Estonians,
Lithuanians and Latvians.’”Indeed, “a
large portion of the population of German colonies [in Russia] didn’t know
Russia because they had no need to accept an alien culture and way of life.”

Even
later, German continues, “for a long time, Russian for our fathers and
grandfathers remained alien, a language spoken by the bosses, convoy soldiers,
and camp guards, and therefore it was precisely in this language and at the
beginning of the last century that one heard the slogan ‘Kill the
German!’”

Even
before World War II, Germans in Russia were viewed with suspicion; and then,
they were deported. “And after the war, they were prohibited from returning to
the places of their former residence or to study in universities and
technicums. They were even prohibited from speaking their native language in
public places.”

“For many years,” he says, “Soviet power
did everything possible so that the Germans would occupy a lower social rank
and be more illiterate than other Soviet peoples. More denigrated and more
rightless.”But despite this, now,
Russians want to call “all Germans born in the post-Soviet space Russian
Germans.”

Millions of Germans lived earlier in
Ukraine, in Central Asia, and in the Baltic republics did not have any
relationship to Russia and Russians,” raising the question “why then do they
still call us ‘Russian Germans?” One reason is that thanks to Soviet oppression,
many Germans born in Russia don’t speak their national language but only
Russian.

“But these circumstances do not give a
sense of attachment to a land and its dominant nation,” he says. Instead, “it gives
birth to hatred to the country of one’s birth.” And thus we declare “We are not
‘Russian Germans. Not ‘Germano-Russians’ and not ‘Rosso-Germans.’ We are
Germans who were born in the USSR or in Russia.”